The Godborn

by Paul S. Kemp

  Riven opened a dozen tiny gashes in the archfiend. Finally Mephistopheles reached through his protective sheath of shadows and grabbed Riven by an arm. Riven did not relent in his attack, hacking with his saber, gouging the archfiend’s iron skin. Beams of viridian energy shot from Mephistopheles’s eyes but shattered into a rain of harmless motes when they struck the shadowy shroud that protected Riven.

  Roaring in frustrated rage, Mephistopheles beat his wings, spun a tight circle in the air, and flung Riven earthward. But the moment the archfiend released Riven, he flipped in mid-air, extended a hand, and a long rope of shadow formed from the air of the Shadowfell, one end in Riven’s hand, the other looped around Mephistopheles’s throat. Riven’s precipitous fall pulled it taut, choked Mephistopheles, and swung Riven around and back up toward the archfiend. As the archdevil grabbed at the makeshift garrote wrapped around his throat, Riven slammed into him from behind, at the same time loosing two downward slashes that opened Mephistopheles’s flesh. Black ichor oozed from the gashes, and the archdevil raged.

  He beat his wings, whirled, and slammed a fist aglow with magical energy into Riven’s face. The force of the blow, combined with whatever magic augmented it, penetrated Riven’s protective shroud, shattered his nose, and sent him careening earthward, tumbling head over feet. A shock troop devil zoomed at him, hacked at him with its sword, and struck him in the side. The shadows protected him, but the impact made him spin faster.

  No matter. Every shadow in the Shadowfell belonged to him; every shadow was part of him.

  He rode the darkness out of his fall and into the shadows above Mephistopheles. He reversed his grip on his sabers, pointing them down, and as he fell drove them into Mephistopheles’s back, just above the wings. The blades sank in half their length and ichor spurted from the holes.

  The archdevil roared, arched, his wings beating furiously, their impact knocking Riven away and once more sending him earthward. Three shock troop devils tucked their wings and fell with him, swinging their blades as they plummeted. Riven, his back to the ground, parried with his sabers as he fell. He felt the ground rushing up and knew that a hundred more powerful fiends were waiting to pounce on him the moment he hit.

  He channeled divine power into the cloud of shadows around him, turned it acidic to non-divine beings. Caustic shadows left him unharmed but melted flesh from the shrieking shock troop devils. They beat their wings frantically, but the cloud had already reduced their wings to shreds. In mere heartbeats, they’d been reduced to bones, and a shower of gore fell on the waiting devils below.

  Riven rode the darkness back to the Citadel of Shadow, just inside the open double doors. The shadowstuff in his flesh reknit his nose, healed the other minor wounds he’d received during the battle.

  Mephistopheles wheeled over the battlefield, his own wounds already healed, black energy firing from his fists, annihilating undead by the score. He was searching for Riven.

  “Show yourself, man-god!” the archfiend shouted. “I’ll rip your godhood from a hole in your throat!”

  Riven thought himself a match for Mephistopheles, at least in the Shadowfell, but the archdevil’s legions were slaughtering Riven’s undead forces. None of the lesser devils presented a threat to Riven individually, but thousands of them, in combination with Mephistopheles, posed a threat. And Mephistopheles was immortal, and had lived for ages. He knew how to draw on his sliver of divine power in ways Riven did not.

  Of course, Riven didn’t need to defeat Mephistopheles. He just needed to hold him and his army off long enough for Vasen to rescue his father.

  “Hurry up, Cale the Younger,” Riven said, and darted back out into battle.

  Cania hit them before the shadows lifted. A wind so cold it felt like knives sent Vasen’s teeth to chattering. Screams filled the air, the stink of burning flesh, the smell of brimstone. Distant cracks boomed, the sound so loud it seemed as though the bones of titans might be breaking. Bestial grunts and growls carried on the biting gusts.

  When the shadows that transported them dissipated, they all three stared in horror at the terrain. They stood on an icy promontory, exposed to the wind. A sky the color of blood glowed above them, the sun that lit it little more than a distant torch. Ice extended in all directions, huge jagged shards jutting from the cracked, windswept landscape.

  Thick rivers of magma cut through the ice, glowing veins of flame in which tortured souls writhed. Devils stalked the river banks, stabbing at the damned with their polearms, pulling impaled souls from the magma. Huge, malformed devils blotted the sky in distant flocks. Vasen could not make out their forms at such a distance, but their squirming, awkward flight made him vaguely nauseated.

  Vasen had seen it before in dreams, but still it sickened him. “Don’t look,” he said, but Gerak and Orsin seemed transfixed, overwhelmed by what they saw. Vasen grabbed each of them by the arm and shook them harshly. “Look at me. Look at me.”

  They did, and he saw from the look in their eyes that what they’d seen had marked their souls. They’d never unsee it. If they lived, it would haunt their dreams for the rest of their lives.

  It would fall to him to keep his companions grounded. His dreams and his faith had armored him against Cania’s horror. The fire in his spirit could not be quenched, not even by the Eighth Hell. He held his shield forth and uttered a prayer to the Dawnfather.

  “Strength to our spirit, Dawnfather. And resolve to our purpose.”

  He channeled his faith through his shield, and it glowed with a rosy light that touched each of them, warmed them, comforted them. Immediately Vasen felt his spirit lighten, felt the darkness and cold retreat. Gerak and Orsin, too, seemed less haunted.

  “Stay strong,” he said to them, as he drew Weaveshear. Both nodded. “It’s an awful place, but it’s just a place.”

  “Just a place,” Gerak said, clutching his bow, his voice higher than usual.

  A line of shadows poured out of Weaveshear and flowed down the side of the promontory, toward the plains below. Vasen followed its path with his eyes and saw where it was headed.

  A mound of snow and ice rose out of the frigid plain. Dark lines swirled around the mound, ropes of shadow that were unmoved by Cania’s wind.

  “There,” he said, and pointed with Weaveshear.

  He tried to feel the correspondence between the shadows where they stood and the shadows near the mound, but he couldn’t quite feel it. Perhaps he needed to practice the skill more, or perhaps the wards around the mound prevented the connection. Either way, they’d have to move on foot.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  A bellow sounded from above and behind them, so loud it nearly knocked them from their feet. Ice cracked in answer to the sound. A huge shadow darkened the earth.

  Vasen turned, looked up, and gasped.

  A huge form blotted out the sky behind them, a flat, undulating carpet of doughy, black-veined gray flesh a bowshot across. Tiny eyes stared dumbly out of a ridge of flesh in its front. A mouth like a cave hung slackly open, showing a diseased, malformed tongue and rotting, pointed teeth each as tall as a grown man. Vasen had no idea what kept the creature afloat, but each tremulous beat of the fleshy folds that served as its wings sent a wind groundward that smelled of corpses.

  The three men gagged, pulled cloaks over their mouths.

  Forms moved atop the creature, red-scaled devils, a score or more. If they saw the three companions . . .

  “Down!” Vasen said. “Down!”

  But it was too late. The huge beast bellowed again, the sound dislodging a shower of ice and snow from the earth, and angled downward. Dozens of the muscular, red-skinned devils leaped off the creature’s back, falling through the sky like a red rain. Each of them bore a vicious looking glaive. A squirming nest of short tentacles grew from their faces and jaws like a grotesque beard. They whooped as they hit the ice and pelted toward the companions.

  “They saw us!” Vasen said. “Run! Now!”

  Whi
le his two companions leaped over the edge of the promontory and slid down the side, Vasen aimed his shield at the oncoming wave of devils and intoned a prayer to the Dawnfather. His shield flared white and a wave of holy energy shot forth from it in a wide line. It struck the leading devils and knocked them off their feet. Of those coming behind, some leaped over their fallen brethren, while others tripped on them and fell in a tangle of limbs and claws.

  Vasen turned and jumped down the edge after his comrades. He’d misjudged its steepness and hung for a terrifying second in open air before he slammed back down on the edge and skidded down the slope on his backside. He tried to slow himself with his shield and blade but could not get purchase in the ice. Hitting the plain below sent a painful shock through his legs. Orsin pulled him to his feet. Gerak had two arrows nocked and sighted back up the ledge.

  “Move!” Vasen said. “Move, Gerak!”

  From above came the whoops and hollers of the pursuing devils. One of them leaped high over the lip of the promontory, glaive glittering in the red light of the plane. Gerak loosed both arrows at once and the devil’s whoop turned to a pained squeal.

  Vasen grabbed Gerak and Orsin and ran for the cairn of his father as the body of the devil Gerak had shot crashed to the ice beside them.

  Hollers, growls, and snarls sounded from behind them. Vasen spared a look back to see a score of devils pouring over the ledge, scrabbling down its side, reaching the plain and pelting after the companions.

  “Don’t look back!” he said. “Just run! Run!”

  They careened over the ice, slipping as they ran, their breath pouring out of them in frozen clouds. Gerak fell once, as did Vasen, and both times Orsin, surefooted even on the ice, helped them rise and keep running.

  The growls grew louder behind them, the sound of their fiendish claws digging into the ice. They closed on the mound, the shadows from Weaveshear mixing with those emanating from the mound.

  A shadow fell over the plain—the huge, flying devil looming over them. It bellowed as it flew over and past them, the sound like a thousand war drums. The three companions gagged on the stink of the creature. It swooped low and they all three dived onto their bellies to avoid getting hit, sliding along the ice.

  The enormous creature could’ve flattened them by simply landing atop them, but it did not touch down for some reason. Perhaps its physiology prevented it from touching the ground. Vasen hoped so.

  They rode their momentum back to their feet and sprinted onward.

  The devils were closer. Vasen could almost feel their breath on his back.

  “Keep going!” he said. “Keep going!”

  As they closed on the cairn, Vasen could see a dome-shaped distortion in the air around it.

  The wards.

  Weaveshear would have to cut through them or the three of them would die on Cania’s plains, torn apart by devils.

  He did not slow as he approached the wall of the wards. Instead he raised Weaveshear high, shouted at the sky, and slashed at the translucent wall with the blade of his father.

  The wards of an archdevil audibly and visibly split. Glowing veins of power flared all over the dome. Weaveshear opened a gash in the dome about the size of a door, leaving the rest of the ward structure intact. The three piled through.

  Immediately Orsin turned and dragged his staff across the ice, scribing a line across the opening.

  “Gerak and I will hold them here!” he said to Vasen. “Go get your father!”

  Vasen nodded, sprinted for the mound, the shadows from his sword and flesh mingling with those of the mound.

  Behind him, Gerak’s bow sang. Devils roared and cursed. He looked back to see Orsin standing in the open gash in the wards, his staff humming and leaking shadows as it spun. The devils could try the opening only one at a time, and Orsin’s staff, elbows, fists, and knees cracked against devilish hide and armor. Behind him, Gerak fired an arrow every time Orsin afforded him an opening.

  Vasen turned to the mound. Shadows swirled around him, a tangible thing, kith to him. The mound was cracked in many places. He slammed his shield into the ice but it did not even mar its surface.

  He cursed, glanced back at his comrades to see a claw tear into Orsin and drive him back a step, bleeding. Before the devil could follow up, Gerak loosed an arrow that struck the devil in the throat and sent it staggering back into its fellow fiends. Orsin lunged forward and slammed the butt of his staff into the devil’s face, shattering fangs and sending the fiend careening backward.

  “Hurry, Vasen!” Gerak called, without looking back. “There’s too many!”

  The huge flying creature hovered over them, and another of the big creatures, perhaps having heard the bellow of the first, was coming toward them from their left, its bulk filling the sky. Two score more of the bearded devils rode its back.

  Shadows poured from Vasen’s flesh. He stared down at the cairn, under which his father lay. He’d free him with his father’s weapon.

  He raised Weaveshear, the blade shedding shadows the way a pitch torch shed smoke. He hoped its power could cut through the ice that entombed his father as well as it had cut through the wards of an archdevil. He whispered a prayer to Amaunator and stabbed downward, driving the blade into the ice all the way to the hilt.

  A crack spread from where he’d struck. Beneath him the mound rumbled. The crack expanded into another, and then another, each crack spawning yet another until an entire network of lines crisscrossed the cairn. Shadows poured from them, like black steam escaping a heated kettle. The mound continued to vibrate, the shaking becoming more violent. Shadows churned around the mound, spinning and whirling. A hum filled the air as power gathered.

  “Watch out!” Vasen shouted.

  He grabbed Weaveshear and slid off the side just as the mound exploded in a cloud of shadows and ice and snow. The force of it knocked him backward, and for a moment, the shadows and snow and ice swirled so thickly that he couldn’t see.

  He glanced back to see that the explosion had knocked Orsin and Gerak and all of the devils to the ice. Already they were climbing back to their feet, their expressions dazed.

  “Hold them off!” he shouted, his voice dull and distant to his still ringing ears.

  The mound was gone. A crater marred the plain where it had stood. Shadows poured out of it. Vasen staggered up to the side of the crater and at the bottom of it, saw his father.

  Erevis Cale lay stretched out in the ice, eyes closed, hands crossed over his chest, as if he were a corpse someone had arranged for burial. He was bald, clean-shaven, taller than Vasen, with a prominent nose and strong jaw. He wore fitted leathers and a dark cloak. Shadows spun around his dusky flesh. He looked much as Vasen might have guessed.

  “Erevis! Father!”

  His father didn’t move.

  Vasen cursed, slid over the edge of the crater, heaved his father’s body over his shoulder, and clambered out.

  “I have him!” he called to Gerak and Orsin.

  Orsin unleashed a furious onslaught of blows with his staff, driving back a pair of devils who tried to get through the hole in the wards. He bounded back, dragged his shadow-tipped staff across the ground, and snapped it over his knee. Instantly a curtain of darkness rose up from the line Orsin had scribed, crackling with energy, filling the gap.

  Orsin ran toward Vasen. Gerak backed toward him, firing arrow after arrow as he moved.

  Vasen laid Erevis on the ground, the shadows around father and son intermingling in a blended darkness.

  Vasen slapped him on the cheeks. “Erevis! Father!”

  No response.

  Gerak and Orsin reached him. Gerak continued to fire. Orsin was dripping blood from deep scratches in his face and arms.

  “Hurry, Vasen,” the deva said, his eyes on the curtain of force he’d raised.

  Vasen nodded, put a hand on his father’s brow, whispered a prayer, and channeled healing energy into Erevis. Vasen’s hand glowed with a warm, rosy light, the energy of the
god of the sun healing the First of Mask’s Chosen in Faerûn.

  They all exhaled with relief when Cale’s eyes opened, glowing yellow in the shadowed gloom. His gaze narrowed and he grabbed Vasen by the wrist, his strength shocking.

  “I dreamed of you,” Cale said. “You’re my . . . son.”

  Shadows swirled around father and son. Vasen swallowed.

  “I am, and I dreamed of you,” Vasen managed, for a moment nearly overcome. For years he’d heard his father’s voice only in dreams.

  Behind them, the devils cursed and growled, poked at the curtain of power Orsin had raised.

  “That wall won’t last,” Orsin said.

  “We have to go,” Cale said, sitting up.

  “Riven said we need to go to Ordulin,” Orsin said.

  Cale’s gaze grew distant for a moment, perhaps as he consulted the content of the dreams he’d had while entombed. When his focus returned, he nodded. “The Leaves of One Night are in Ordulin. That’s where the Shadowstorm started, so that’s where Shar’s little book is. Good. We go, then.”

  “And when we get there?” Orsin asked.

  Cale took in the holy symbol Orsin bore, his absence of weapons. “You’re a shadowalker? One of Nayan’s?”

  “Nayan . . . has been dead a long time. But I am one of his, yes. I can’t walk the shadows as they did, but they answer me in other ways. My name is Orsin.”

  “Gerak,” said Gerak to Cale. The woodsman drew and fired, and a devil squealed.

  “When we get there,” Cale said. “We read the Leaves. They’re said to contain Shar’s moment of greatest triumph but also her moment of greatest weakness. Her moment of weakness has to be the return of Mask, her herald. Has to be. If that happens, the Cycle of Night gets frozen forever.”

  Vasen shook his head. “But Riven said I have to unlock the divinity in him, Rivalen, and Mephistopheles. I don’t know how to do that.”